Charles J Tan - An Acoustic Preamble

A touch of country, acoustic folklore and styles of travelogues, the baritone weathered voice of Charles J Tan is often compared to the likes of John Mayer and Jack Johnson. Born in Singapore, now based in Australia, Charles started playing and writing music at the age of 14 on a broken classical guitar and taught himself rhythm and chords without knowing how to read music. His first song was written with the first four chords he learnt.

Charles fell in love with words and phonetics and sitting in his Dad’s car, on a normal drive, he would read out street names, signs and piece together letters and alphabets to make up pronunciations of words he’d never seen before. It is ironic, considering he came from a non-english speaking home and failed his first spelling test in school. His love for the language led him to a journey in drama, writing, particularly in poetry. The rhythm and chords he found soon melded into songs and stories.

After high school, Charles formed a band, Water & Wine, and started playing at many gigs hosted by independent labels and production companies such as Awakening Productions and Tsunami Project. 1998 saw the release of a track, Love Song, published under Awakening Productions’ compilation CD featuring independent bands and artists in Singapore. Water & Wine disbanded a year later and Charles traveled across the oceans to pursue studies in Media and Communications at the University of Melbourne. Music took a back seat as financial pressures took it’s toll and Charles found himself working a day job and running a several business ventures concurrently to get ahead, one of them being a music entertainment service. In a stroke of what seemed like bad luck and judgement, the business folded and while struggling with a close shave with bankruptcy, Charles started writing and performing again.

He started a short stint with a band called, The CharlieBoy Band, played regularly at Cafe Crema, a friend’s cafe, and started to build a small fan base. His stints also include in-house performances and soundtrack writing credits for Life Expedition’s Annual Dinner functions. He recently released his long overdue EP, An Acoustic Preamble, in the Spring of 2008 (Australia) and started playing and performing as a full time musician. He also runs a music podcast in support of independent music. Charles is also a self taught recording and mixing engineer. He is currently working on a full length album scheduled to be released in the first half of 2009.

• An Acoustic Preamble [EP]

• Folk, Pop
• Charles J Tan
• 11/06/2008
• 

1. Made For More
2. New Day
3. Feels Better Now
4. Weight Of The World
5. Personal Anthem
6. Free